Issue #1: The fact that nobody knew the Soul Shards were coming back. Blizzard, buddy, I know D3 isn’t a priority anymore, but you still need someone who actually speaks English fluently to write your patch notes. Literally everybody thought that the mix of permanent altar and old seasonal themes would be starting in Season 31 because of how badly you worded your patch notes.
Issue #2: No altar materials for sale. Pretty insane to me that people are having to farm Gibbering Gemstone just to test if any gamebreaking altar-soulshard interactions exist FOR BLIZZARD.
Issue #3: No change with Hellforge Ember acquisition. Similarly, it boggles the mind that people just have to farm out Hellforge Embers like they’re actually grinding a season.
Issue #4: Like the issue with the seasonal themes returning, WoL LoD monk change is worded in an absolutely asinine way. Literally everybody who only read the patch notes thought that LoD monk was just getting buffed out of nowhere. Then you actually log on, and you realize the base 150% amp on Kyoshiro is just gone. The build just lost one of its three core legendary powers out of nowhere, and you’d never be able to tell just from the patch notes. How awesome!
And all of these issues are just what I observed from spending an hour messing around with a single character. Can’t imagine what is happening to all the other players and their classes.
Edit: for issue number 4, there’s literally a post right now, in this very forum section, crying about LoD monk getting a buff lmao. Lil bro doesn’t even know the build just got gutted, and it’s legit all because of the patch writer’s laughable incompetence.
I’m not claiming that at all. I was surprised they went with Soul Shards. I thought they would do one of the earlier themes like “free RoRG” or pick something awful like “Killer snowball” theme. Not a “broken” theme like 4th cube slot or Ethereals or Soul Shards.
I’m saying, myself and everyone I know, were expecting first recycled theme to drop in s30, not s31 like you said.
Not really. The Soh is the 2nd from the last sacrifice. Two non-power related nodes can be left unlocked which won’t have any effect on the interactions with the theme. The double DBs and Pets pick up DBs are two that come to mind,
Dude, are you Drax? I thought it’s clear that I’m using SS to represent all old seasonal themes lol.
That’s not important though. If you and your friends weren’t surprised by old themes returning, then great, you bros are clearly smarter than Wudijo’s Discord server. And also the entire D3 Subreddit. Because I don’t see a single person saying a 3rd Seasonal Theme was expected.
Oh, but also, could you kindly point me to the part of the PTR patch notes where it informs players that any old themes beyond the Altar and Visions, let alone soul shards specifically, would be returning? If not, it circles back to my original point of Blizzard being incompetent and pathetic with their current PTR cycle, no?
And now,
…one example: How does double primal node interact with Soul Shards? Cuz SSs drop as red lights on the ground instead of orange.
Another example: double DB + Vision of Enmity, how much DB is too much DB? Bcuz during the Crucible PTR, we had issues with Wizards causing lag.
A third example: double bounties, how does that interact with the Enmity cache? Since we keep Visions, we literally don’t need bounties anymore beyond RoRG, so people could very well skip that node at first and be gated from testing by SoH.
Obviously, for all of these examples, the expectation is that nothing goes wrong, but I’m no programmer, D3 is a dead game that naturally gets less resources, and Blizzard isn’t the company that fills people with confidence anymore.
Why are we still having to farm gibbering gem stone? Nobody enjoys this. Why do we have to suffer through this? I don’t care if some folks think its easy. Easy has nothing to do with farming something one does not like. For example, there is a clear reason why many players do not pursue the achievement and reward for clearing all of the set dungeons. This is not fun or interesting.
Side Note: If the devs/blizz management think/assume that players have a very short memory, such as that of a fruit fly, they would be very, very wrong. Many of us remember clearly how annoying, boring, and irritating some of the past and current game mechanics are. For example, set dungeons in general, farming mats for staff of herding (gibbering gem stone in particular), and the old gauntlet mechanic for upgrading rift keystones. We got the old gauntlet mechanic back as the echoing nightmare. Just because the devs added loot, gold, XP, and a path to augments doesn’t make it fun. I get that its a relatively easy path to 125 augments, but my initial reaction is “didn’t the devs get rid of this mechanic (the gauntlet) because players complained repeatedly about not wanting to engage this mechanic”? My point is that it is still a bitter pill even if it is served up in a candy coated outter shell and drowned in syrup.
Barely. The rarity of primals is barely boosted with doubled primals. That plus they are still 99% of the time uselss. At best, it’s double ashes. As for the beam colors, it would have no effect at all.
The lag was caused by overloading the servers with AD calculations. Not DBs or their drop rate.
I didn’t mention the double bounties. Unlock that node like usual. Never the less, there’s no interation at all. The number of Horadric chests that drop wouldn’t affect the Visions. Even if one chooses to not unlock it, it doesn’t need testing. People will run which ever one they need.
The color of the loot has no behind-the-scene relationship to their quality? That’s good to know. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing this without testing, because Blizzard doesn’t communicate it with us.
Yeah, it would make sense for all those meteors to cause a problem like this. Again, though, did we get this info as an official statement from Blizz?
I don’t think you got what I mean lol. Why would people unlock the double bounty cache node normally when Visions are a thing now? We don’t have to touch bounties at all anymore. And then, when they think of the possibility of testing double bounty and Vision interaction, they’re suddenly stuck farming GG on a test server again.
Item quality yes, but that’s not what I was referring to, nor does the quality of an item have anything to do with altar interaction testing. And what testing is needed to know what orange, green and red beams mean?
I interpreted it as part of your altar interaction testing argument. As in, relevance of the double bounty node being anything that need interaction testing. As I said, people will do which ever one they need. There’s no interaction to test.
Soul shard, hellforge ember are different item codes. s25 where souls shard was introduced, there were still datamine database displaying which. Hellforge Ember are same category as consumables.
You’re asking “what testing is needed” when we got a double primal node and a finicky supposedly-one-off thing that is technically color-coded as primals? Surely a CS member is better than this.
People will CHOOSE other nodes as they initially fill out their tree because bounties have become obsolete with the existence of Visions. Then, a lot of them might eventually realize that they want to test the interactions between the double bounty node and a new cache that is coded to drop bounty materials, which I think is a reasonable thing to want to test due to the various unfavorable circumstances of D3. However, they will not be able to test that interaction, because the testing is now locked behind 10+ hours of GG farming. Is that clear enough for you now?
How about you avoid resorting to veiled insults and instead stick to the topic? Even still, you haven’t explained what needs testing clearly enough to be understood. Based off your description, I posed the question, what needs testing.
So lets try this another way. That is finicky? What is supposedly-one-off? And what is the problem with the colored beams?
Yes, that’s been my point this whole time when it comes to the PTR, Epilogue. Also, let’s not fall victim to hyperbole. Some of the bounties do have a purpose even with the visions.
So your basing your counterarguments off a hypothetical that changes might be made to the Horadric Chests in the future? Well, if the chest changes aren’t being made now in the PTR, which they haven’t, the point is moot.
Your error is assuming that what you think needs testing is what Bliz needs to test. They could have set up the PTR to do all these things you’re claiming if any of it was a priority of testing to them. And even if they overlooked it initially, they could have changed it during the PTR. None of that came to pass. And with a day left, it’s not unreasonable to say that how they implemented the PTR is how they wanted it for their purposes.
Interesting that you’d assume disappointment to be an insult. To repeat what I’ve already said for you, though, red beams = Soul Shards look like Primals = Soul Shards might be coded as Primals for all we know. Therefore, it is reasonable to want to test if double Primals impact Soul Shards, which is not test-able without GG farming. And if something that people would assume need to be tested is not test-able, then that’s bad test-server-designing.
Rounding down a decimal is not being hyperbolic, it’s called having common sense. Aside from Ring of Royal Grandeur, which I have already mentioned, bounties are just less efficient than Visions, period.
It’s not a change. The “new cache” is the one we have right now, it is factually new because it wasn’t in the game back when we all got to play with altar. And since there is no precedence of these two things coexisting, any kind of bug is technically possible, which means it should be tested.
Finally, this is a great thought. However, at this point into the company’s lifespan, Blizzard and communication are practically antonyms. The only thing we get is that Blizzard “urges us to focus our playthrough on Rites of Sanctuary and Visions of Enmity.” All the things I have listed fall into that category. With all of that in mind, are you still going to say that it is efficient, or even okay, for us to leave the Altar unfinished for the sake of testing?
So again, hypotheticals. Besides, Abella straightened that out above.
If rounding a decimal is what you did, I’d whole heartedly agree.
Period, eh? Speaking for everyone now? This is where your credibility starts to suffer thus continuing this starts to appear in vain.
RoRG is not the only useful item for everyone. I use items in Acts 1, 2 and 3. With act 4 containing all those acts, Act 4 is useful. That’s 4 out of 5 bounties.
What cache? The bounty chest? What’s different with it now that wasn’t present in the past?
Again, if it was something important, it would have been set up that way. It’s just a PTR. Bliz can mess with it all they want. So AGAIN, your mistake is trying to tell us/Bliz what Bliz needs to test. So, yes.
Listen, I get it. You don’t want opposition to your claims. But disparagement, hyperbole, speaking for everyone, telling Bliz what’s important to them, etc will never cement your position. It in fact does the exact opposite.
And thus the disappointment continues. I’m just going to show you what I started with and hope you read everything twice this time or something, because I dunno how else to get through to you lol.
As for my final reply, one thing to clear up.
It is my mistake to refer to the end-of-Vision chest as “cache.” Apologies for the confusion that caused during the conversation. I am saying that, based on how this chest also drops bounty materials, and Blizzard’s less-than-stellar track record, it isn’t unreasonable to expect some sort of bug to pop up from the union of this chest and the double bounty altar node, and that wanting to test something like so is completely in-line with Blizzard’s PTR patch note instruction of “focus our playthrough on Rites of Sanctuary and Visions of Enmity.” Hopefully this clears up the misunderstanding my wording caused.
Just for clarification, if not mentioned before, I unlocked full altar on PTR (with double Primals activated), neither soul shards or embers are dropping “double”.